There has hitherto been required reduction in power consumption in display devices such as liquid crystal display devices. Accordingly, for example, Patent Document 1 discloses a method for driving a display device where, after a scan period (also referred to as charge period) T1 in which gate lines of a liquid crystal display device are scanned to refresh a screen, a pause period T2 in which all the gate lines are brought into a non-scanned state to pause the refresh is provided. In this pause period T2, it is possible to prevent a controlling signal from being given to a gate driver and/or a source driver, for example. Hence it is possible to pause operations of the gate driver and/or the source driver, so as to lower power consumption. The drive that is performed by providing the pause period after the charge period as in the drive method described in this Patent Document 1 is called a “pause drive”, for example. In addition, this pause drive is also called a “low-frequency drive” or an “intermittent drive”. Such a pause drive is preferable for a still image display. Inventions related to the pause drive are also disclosed in Patent Documents 2 to 5 besides Patent Document 1.
In a display device that performs the pause drive, it is generally possible to switch between a normal drive with a refresh rate of 60 Hz or higher, for example, and a pause drive with a refresh rate of lower than 60 Hz, for example. This allows lowering of power consumption in a manner suitable for an image to be displayed.